Unofficial news and tips about Google

July 29, 2011

Microsoft's Gmail Man Ad

Mary-Jo Foley found a Microsoft ad that tries to convince businesses to choose Office 365 instead of Google Apps because Gmail shows targeted ads. Microsoft created a character called Gmail Man, a postman that doesn't care about people's privacy and reads their messages to find related ads.

The irony is that the paid version of Google Apps doesn't show ads, even though administrators can choose to enable them. I thought that the whole "Gmail reads my mail" myth was debunked back in 2004 and people realized that online email services already used algorithms to index messages and to find spam.

"It was a fascinating angle in 2005 while Gmail was still new and under all kinds of scrutiny, but today, who cares that your emails are automatically scanned, really? Even before Gmail, ISP's already had the ability to read all your emails, but it has never really stopped anyone from using the email service of their choice," thinks Cédric Beust, a former Googler.

And what would Hotmailman look like? Actually it'd be half-naked chick trying to get me to play some online game or something stupid, irrelevant, and inappropriate. Half the time their NSFW - and I'll I'm doing is exchanging lasagna recipes!

I actually like the Gmail-man character, as he's totally up-front about what he's doing. And they should make a sitcom about him. The video is rather Pythonesque, and looks as if some Googlers made it in an effort to visualize the unreadable small print. It may be Microsoft is shooting its own foot here, for it doesn't matter how they talk about you as long as the talk about you, is a well-known advertising adagium.

Daring Fireball...there's your answer. In the end, Gruber will likely be exposed for the Apple shill that he is. Oh how coy he is about bringing negative issues to the forefront when is comes to Apple's competition. I wonder what alias Gruber goes under on the Apple payroll?

Microsoft has kind hearted people working for them, who are wonderful at coding and figuring out problems, in a humble and productive way. Those people make up 1% of Microsoft. The other 99% are scum bags. Microsoft is disgusting.

That Microsoft is a disgrace is beside the point. But that's not justification enough for Google's intrusive methods... saying that, this video is so badly done that you feel more sympathy towards Gmailman than to that annoying girl or the dull woman at the office.

Being impartial I see an interesting fact. There are messages about bad marketing, desperation and insecurity above. This was a marketing ploy, right or wrong it succeeded. Ranting about it only adds to its popularity. Even bad publicity is good exposure.

Yes besides, Microsoft isn't interested in reading your email, they already know far more about you from having their operating system do more spying on you than gmail could ever hope to invoke. Oh right, but that is under the guise of anti-piracy so it's much different. Silly me.